


Wonder Woman XY

by TransTifa



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Hades (Video Game 2018), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Origin Story, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Trans, Bisexual Diana (Wonder Woman), F/F, LGBTQ Female Character, LGBTQ Themes, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:55:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28305657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TransTifa/pseuds/TransTifa
Summary: Queen Hippolyta gifts the Amazons of Themyscira with a princess, but Antiope senses the child's unusual birth and unfamiliar body will bring hardship as she grows older.
Kudos: 22





	1. Prologue

As the rest of the island caught the news – that the queen had given the Amazons a princess without the aid of a man – the queen and her general sat within the newly founded nursey of the palace. The queen, her arms having finally tired, offered the baby to the general.

“Won’t you hold your niece, sister?” asked Hippolyta.

General Antiope didn’t budge from her seat across the room at first. Hippolyta moved toward her, extending the child downward. It was then that Hippolyta rose and Hippolyta needed to offer the infant upward to accommodate Antiope’s height.

While both sisters bore an intense love for the Amazons, Hippolyta shone with the aura of the sun: distant, radiant, and warm. Antiope’s, meanwhile, could be mistaken for dullness to the untrained: quiet, sturdy as a mountain and swift-footed as a fierce bird. But when she took the baby in her massive arms, even a beast could sense an aura like the moon: softness in light and steady in grace, and close as a heartbeat. The general who trained every Amazon in the ways of war but hated the foolishness of it was known across Themyscira for her quiet tenderness. When she trained an aspiring Amazon warrior, tossing them to the Earth day after day, each one felt the growing closeness that only sisters in arms in battle could know and that her sister could not share. And now, without even passing one training regimen, this baby had easily gained it.

“This is…” Antiope said, her statue-esque face not showing a hint of emotion, but her voice trembling, “A complication.”

“You sound concerned,” mused Hippolyta.

“As far as our sisters and your subjects will respond – no. They will be grateful to have a princess. I will bow to her when she is old enough to stand as well. My concern is the child will not find a place among the Amazons.”

“And what would bring you to that conclusion?”

“Amazons are born, Hippolyta, from the waters of creation. Olympus’s second attempt at creating women without men.”

Hippolyta sat next to the window and gazed far off to the still-growing crowd entering Penthesipolis.

“Oh, Antiope. You would insult yourself? You don’t think you can train Diana as an Amazon?”

“I train warriors, sister. Not Amazons.”

Antiope loosened the sheets around the quiet infant, letting them fall so its whole body could be glimpsed. Antiope’s eyes darted down but not an inch of her expression altered.

“There,” she said, “the oracles were correct. Born – well, made – under an unfamiliar sign.”

Gently as she could, Antiope used the tips of her fingers to draw up the baby’s appendage. After a moment, the baby squirmed. Urine shot directly out from between Antiope’s fingers and over her shoulder.

“You do know what this is?” asked Antiope.

“Of course,” said Hippolyta. “I still remember life before Themyscira.”

“So, it seems even with the blessings of Olympus, your hands could not be guided away from mistakes.”

“It’s just a piece of flesh. A little extra.”

“It’s a sign, Hippolyta. Like the stars one is born under, it tells us the path of the Fates. Time may be slow for us, but it will arrive all the same. This sign… the little extra appendage at the center of the waist, you recall the word for it. Well, I don’t need to be an oracle to tell you that as time moves forward, the difference between her and us will grow into a chasm. I doubt her heart will withstand it. Or that the Amazons will tolerate it.”

Hippolyta rose from her seat and glided back to her sister and daughter. Antiope folded the sheets again and hoisted Diana back into her mother’s arms.

“You think a little extra flesh between the legs is destiny? What do you say to a wager, Antiope? Not for coin, but an experiment before the Fates: you seem to think that my daughter cannot be one of us.”

“Don’t misunderstand me now. You have my word and the vows of all my warriors: the girl is our princess and she will be cared for. But she cannot become an Amazon.”

“Because Amazons are born Amazons…” Hippolyta looked into the wide, curious eyes of her daughter. The girl smiled back and let out a joyous whimper. “That’s what you say. But, I say: why would the Fates send us through all those travails – the fights against heroes, the labors against beasts, the war against the Trojans, and the cruelty of Man’s World, if not to prepare us for our Paradise Island? Could it be that one is not born, but rather, becomes an Amazon? I wonder…”


	2. Thirst

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diana's voice takes over the story; a princess matures from an indulged toddler to a lonely child

In those early ages, when my body was still completely my own, my joy was in having the nurses brush my hair. Calyce, my favorite, would tell me it was just like my mother’s: black and fine as volcanic ash, which is why she would add a bit of oil to give weight to the curls. She taught me how to take each natural clumping and twist them around my finger into a soft, bouncy coil, and continue over all of my head. But even after enough to practice to do it myself, I still preferred her fingers working their way through the wild bunch of it. I would sit, uncooperative and impatient, until she relented and indulged me again.

As early as my memory stretches back, I was aware that I was a princess and detested going through the day without feeling cared for. I loved how Calyce and the others assured me that I was special, that the Amazons adored me for my charm and spirit, that I was the exact image of my mother. None of them ever said I would grow up to be like my mother and the importance of that omission did not occur until my first encounter with truth.

The gods of Olympus created Themyscira without concern in making it paradise. When the prophecies of the Fates, fulfilled by the doomed foolishness of Man, selected Themyscira as a site of paradise, set apart from her neighboring isles, the sisters declared that paradise would be made so by its inhabitants. And after creation and longing and eventual failure, after another thousand years, Themyscira became the home of the Amazons. For me, however, it was not a point of arrival, but providence. I was the first girl native to the island and of its very soil. Queen Hippolyta was the first of the Amazons to break from the waters of creation and breathe in the air of life. Her subsequent displays of valor against the brutish Heracles, her resilience through the wars at Troy, and love for her people, earned her the favor of mother Hera. As a reward, Hera tasked Athena, the goddess without a mother, to task Hippolyta in turn: on the night of the brightest moon in a generation, the gods would grant Hippolyta the madness of creation and set her in a trance. Dazed, she would venture, absent of mind or rationale, to the shore outside the palace of Themyscira, and plunge her hands into the warm clay. Guided by the madness, Hippolyta would craft a daughter, in the shape of the perfect baby girl. And in return for her craft, the gods would breathe life into the girl by morning. And it came to pass, as Athena instructed. The Amazons gained a boon of Athena: the daughter without a father, Diana.

My mother, Hippolyta, commissioned our bard, Mnemosyne, with relaying the prophecy of my birth to me when I was old enough. When she drew toward the end, I chirped:

“Tell me the measure of how they adored her – the princess?”

And swiftly I was indulged.

_______________________

My mother was a queen, honorable and loving, ruling not by law, but trust. Themyscira was not land she, nor any Amazon, owned or held sovereignty over. If she had been queen in the way I’ve come to learn is understood in Man’s World, Themyscira could hardly be called paradise. Ageless and undying, yet possessing seniority by her first-emergence from the waters of creation, she would leave her throne to no dynasty, not even me. She was queen, Calyce explained to me, only because the Amazons recognized her sweeping love for them all and consented not to be ruled, but cherished by authority. In my estimation, this is what all queens and kings and sovereigns truly are, though people like to pretend it happens otherwise – by providence or pragmatism. But it is all agreement, albeit, in Man’s World, a coerced one built on distortions and sleights.

Where my mother was among her sisters, I was in the wilds of the island, misbehaving. When she left the palace to go about the island, I was off, running away. I knew they would come after me. I wanted to know the feeling of being snatched up in their arms, hearing their rejoiced laughter in the relief of having me back.

Some liked to call me “miracle child” – as the only child they had known, the words were on in the same. I played this game to bait them – exuberant and raucous in laughter and reprieve, in the hopes that I could stow it away. But their love never stayed potent for long. I stayed thirsty for a stronger indulgence of it. So, I scampered back to the tall grass or chased the bending rivers, waiting for an Amazon to get wind and take chase. I lived the fullest when they doted on me and I stayed up to all sorts of misbehavior to coax their love from them.

By the time I was old enough to outrun them, I had seen all of Themyscira. Our island sat adrift, far from any of its neighbors in the wine-dark sea, since my mother’s sister, Penthesilea, fell to the wretched Achilles in the wars between Troy and the lesser islands. In her honor, the innermost circle of our city where the throne took head over the body was called Penthesipolis. Beyond lay the city of Themyscira, sprawling in life and luscious scenery, blooming with as many waterways as streets, muscular stone dwellings for the Amazons where flowers grew between the cracks. On the days when I crept out of the palace at dawn to gain a head start, I stopped to see the clustering of the bees, beckoned by our hidden gardens, called out from the fields and the early sun. The bees always moved together, never stinging, and those few that did break off were swiftly gobbled up by the city’s roving hermit cats, which moved from house to house, gaining favor and then, as mercurial as ever, departing for another when the right dawn arrived. Sometimes, I made traveling companions of the cats, letting them guide me until I was caught. On the occasion I felt especially wily, I imitated their gestures: cocking my head, stretching my neck (nuzzling it into those of my Amazon captor when the chase ended). I even tried to urinate like them more than once, but gave up when I realized I could only release the urine forwards.

During the chase, I often hid in the homes furthest from the palace, waiting for Amazons to come home and discover me. It was not violation on my part: Themysciran homes have no doors to seal themselves off from the physical world. The gods had long ago gifted our island with fair winds and sun throughout the seasons, so the need to separate one’s dwelling from the elements amounted to heresy, a rejection of divine favor. With the large beasts of the island content to the wild gardens beyond the city, an Amazon never sought to warden themselves from the air and, in turn, from one another.

I once found this easy enough for the chase. That ended on the day I stopped halfway through scaling a window to see the glassy charm of an open eye hanging on the opposite wall. Even as a child hungry for love and attention, I courteously slung my leg back outside and continued running. The eyes of Stheno warded off the uninvited. Until that day, I had entered any home, even those with the charm. But when it compelled me to be deterred, I obeyed and took pleasure in it.

After hiding no longer proved reliable, I took to running. In turn, the Amazons indulged me. With each escape attempt, I made it far beyond Penthesipolis, and farther and farther still until I regularly crossed the threshold that separated our city from Themyscira’s wild gardens. As with our dwellings, the space between the city and the wilds was less a border than porous meshing; we were at ease with nature and welcomed its crawling presence over what could be called the edge of our city. One might have thought, since my goal was to be caught and feel the affectionate arms of an Amazon, I would not have prolonged the chase longer than I needed. But as I made it further away from the palace, the chase was tinged with excitement all along the way. I sought to prolong this for as long as possible each time, until I consistently made to the far edges of the wilds until being caught. I might have reached the ruins of the Gorgons one day, if I had continued past that day when Orana caught me in gardens of the boars.

Orana had pursued me before, once or twice, but long ago enough that I couldn’t recall much of her. When I found her on my tail, as I cleared the most outlying houses of the Amazons, she flashed a knowing grin, though her eyes seemed weary already. She evidently knew of my reputation, and I paused to giggle at her before bounding into the nearest thick grove. I kept track of her by sound – her massive footsteps faded in and out every so often. Though whenever I looked back, she remained out of sight.

That chase brought me to panting. I had been exhausted before, but again those instances were so long ago that the feeling seemed novel. I knew it was foolish, but I needed a moment to catch my breath. I hid under a bush, covered with wide leaves of dark green, in near total shadows, save for the dappling of sunlight. Out in the clearing, set on all sides by vegetation and trees, I gazed out, listening for Orana’s footsteps. It only took a moment before I heard the snorting instead.

Only three of the bursting snorts sounded before it arrived, hulking out of the bushes – a great, red boar with tusks long and thick as an Amazon’s broadsword. It did not seem to see me, but each time it sniffed the air it lurched its head around. Once it seemed to catch wind of my direction, it crashed its head right into the adjacent bushes. They cracked like twigs. Its snout moved back slowly until it arrived at the edge of my hiding place.

Its head crashed again, nearly blowing away the leaves around me. But it faced away, off in the opposite direction. The red boar crept away from me, quickly at first, then with caution. At first, I couldn’t see past its massive hide. Then she appeared from behind its arched back. The boar lowered its snout into Orana’s outstretched arms, which she brought in carefully, until she was scratching its underside, slowly, from chin to lower jaw. Its body, once taut with muscles and bones sharp enough that they looked as though they would pierce its own hide, gave way to a smooth, furry wall, gently rising and falling with breath. And without a moment of lingering, it stalked away, right past her, until she stood alone in the clearing with me still hidden within the bush.

“Princess…” Orana did not cast an eye at me when she spoke. “Come to me.”

Her voice was like clear water, as though there was nothing in it but her words. It seemed to awaken in me a thirst from deep within.

“Be a good girl.”

I crept out of the bushes. She turned and shot a wide, toothless smile at me. Extending out her hand, she stood in the clearing, letting me inch up toward her. As I drew closer, something primal within me grew. Until now, I had been fickle with my pursuers. I took pleasure being caught and held by any Amazon; though I matured slowly, I had ages ago outgrown the needs of a baby that could only find comfort in her mother’s arms and cried at the hands of strangers. But now, there was Orana, tamer of beasts. I moved up to her, willingly, knowing only her adoration could quench this sensation. When I was in position to take her hand as she beckoned, I dashed past it and threw myself against her, hugging her waist as intensely as I could. She did not budge; she was far too strong. I closed my eyes to concentrate on pressing myself to her tightly, waiting for something to grasp me in return, now that I had surrendered the chase.

At first, I thought they were sticks. They moved around me so stiffly that they were almost coarse at first. But after a moment, I knew they could only be her arms. Not pressing in. Just hanging there, until they found the best way to move around me. It felt nothing like I had anticipated. Even as her grip tightened, they were limp; nothing like the ferocious clinging I knew well from each time they captured me. It was stiff and measured, and as my expectations withered away in the face of what she delivered to me, it dawned on me that all that ferocity – the intense clutching of adoration – had always been from my own force of resistance. Once it was given freely, without my feigned desperation at escaping, that grasp was not an embrace, but a cold, obligated binding, as one would restrain a runaway cat. The same feeling in her arms I had felt a thousand times before may have given me delight but for them – as it was now – it was obligation.

Orana delivered me back to the palace, brushing the top of my head in feigned affection. I said nothing to her as she departed. When Calyce arrived, I stalked away, casting a cold eye at her. Never again would I feel that grasp of love, or fool myself into thinking it was there. From then on, when I felt the touch of the Amazons it was clear that these signs of care – the preening of my hair, the flattering words describing my charm, the soft but never tender embrace of their arms – were not born of love, but kindly pity. And soon enough, the wonder dried up too.

Next Time: **The General of the Amazons!**


	3. Aim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caught in a fog, Diana seeks out wisdom from her aunt, Antiope. The general of the Amazons is known for her blunt demeanor, so Diana is confident she won't lie to spare her feelings. But Antiope's guidance may make the uphill Diana faces even steeper.

In the days following my encounter with Orana, time seemed to accelerate around me as I drifted through it sideways. Summer passed into winter without me realizing, which meant the Themysciran rains began their cycle. They were always gentle rains, a refreshing sort, awakening any dormant life across our island. During the winter, Amazons stayed out most of the day, bathing in the relief from summer’s broken heat. They let themselves be soaked. I stayed indoors, occasionally welcoming a cat seeking shelter form the storm.

My mother still cared for me. In the hours when the palace was quietest, she had a way of appearing without notice and would invite me to gobble up fresh figs between meals. In another life, her love would have been more than enough. But I had spoiled myself longing for the Amazons. At this age, her sweetness could be taken for granted and could no longer warm me.

Once the rainy season had passed and I lacked excuses for staying indoors that wouldn’t give away my sorrow, I spent days wracking my mind to think of anyone who could understand my state. None of the Amazons had childhoods. None had grown into themselves. But at the same time, all of them had been taught at one point. With that, I asked for the queen’s permission to visit to Antiope.

“You’re always permitted to visit the general, my child,” she said. “She doesn’t perform trainings very much these days. And we’re not having games for quite some time.”

“I want to come and go freely,” I said. “See aunt Antiope when I want to and stay however long. I think there’s something I have to learn and only she can teach me.”

“You wish to be trained as a warrior, then. Well, I didn’t think you would ask for at least a little while longer, until you gained some proper height. But if you cannot wait longer, then I grant it on my authority. Go to the general.”

I thanked her, though she did not completely understand. I was mostly to blame for that. When I bowed before my mother, I thought the words that could describe what I needed, how I had felt since that day with Orana, would come to me. They did not. I did not seek training, but something softer. On my way to the general’s compound on the rocky end of Penthesipolis’ shore – the Amazonian training flats – I practiced what I would say to Antiope.

I had never visited the practice yards before. I long assumed it would be a smaller version of the amphitheater where the solstice games were held. When I made it across the rocky shoreline and past the date palms that kept the sea from scaling past its place at high tide, Antiope was sitting there, beneath a palm. Save for the scattered trees, the yards were pure dust, sunbaked and yellow, with the prints of many sandals still embedded. There was hardly any wind. Aside from Antiope herself and the scattering of date palms, all that stood out were the rack of weapons and a far-off cluster of olive groves.

“Welcome, princess. What are you here for?” Antiope sank one knee to the ground and lowered her head. “Come to study war, I guess.”

“No. I wanted to spend time with you.”

Antiope rose to her full height. My mother had told me that when I was a baby, Antiope was afraid to hold me, worrying that if she dropped me, I would not survive the fall. Even as she stepped out of the shade with the light of the midday sun beating on her skin, brown as egg shells, I could not see her eyes from behind her thick, dark hair.

“I am not merry company, Diana.” She just stood there, as though she had expected me to turn back around at her word. After a moment of lingering, she walked back to the tree and returned with a satchel. Out of the satchel she pulled a flask, bound in animal skin, its bottom dark and wet.

“I haven’t applied sandalwood oil to my feet today. If you use your small fingers on the calloused parts, you can stay as long as it takes. Talk about whatever you want.” 

Antiope’s feet were larger than both of my hands. I struggled to get the oil to sink in past the surface of her callouses.

“What would you like to talk about, kin?” asked Antiope. “The sky is clear at last. I’ve been finding time to keep my body honed for support. I suppose I do appreciate the excuse to take a break.”

Her frankness was infectious and I was compelled not to palter.

“The Amazons pity me.”

“Is that so? I’m sorry to hear that. What would you have of them if things were different?”

“I don’t know. But that’s why I came to see you.”

Antiope stretched her toes slightly. The tendons underneath her skin bulged beneath my hands as I tried to get the sandalwood oil to stay. She took the moment to sweep back and bind her hair. I wondered if the Gorgons – when they were alive – looked something like her: long, thick tendrils hanging around her face with eyes that were deep-set but so large they still managed to pop out. I instinctively averted her gaze.

“One doesn’t find me making sacrifices to Aphrodite. I can’t make them love you.”

She didn’t laugh as she spoke. She didn’t deliver this news with any grave warning. She didn’t seem to have any judgment or evaluation of it at all. Still I felt the need to check.

“Are you trying to shew me away?” I asked.

“When I tell you something,” said Antiope, “you can go to sleep on it. No second guesses.”

“Yes…” I trailed off and stopped kneading her calloused soles for a moment. She didn’t seem to mind. It was becoming clearer that Antiope might be the only person I could trust not to look at me with that tinge of shame I saw in the eyes of the Amazons. Whatever I was to them, she did not see it, though I was pretty sure I made too little of an impression for her to see anything.

“I came to you because you won’t hide whatever you feel behind courtesy.” Can you tell me what they see in me?”

Antiope pulled back her foot and leaned forward to get closer.

“You’ve made sure to drink water, no?”

I nodded, taken aback slightly. What could she mean in asking me this?

Antiope reached back into her satchel.

“The Amazons were born from water – souls of women across time, adrift, gathered by Hera and the other goddesses of Olympus, and then given shape in the briny waters of creation.”

She removed a large, faded coin from the satchel and rolled it between her fingers.

“The Gorgons were created from fire. These attempts were done in part to correct the Titans’ mismeasure of Man, sculpted from the earth we walk on.”

With a flash of her wrist, she tossed the coin to my left. I reached down to grab it. She held up a hand and I stopped instantly.

“You were made from earth as well, Diana. That doesn’t mean you’re anything like Man, only that you’re different enough that all of us know it. And many of them fear it, instinctively. I would hazard to say that all but your mother and I are intimidated by it. Hippolyta with her unyielding love, the kind a mother is capable of giving. Myself… well, there’s little I find intimidating, certainly not a little child. Not to mention you have the breath of the gods in you. Olympus and the stains of Man are not something many of us envisioned for Paradise Island. It may not show yet, but it will in time. So, if you don’t mind relieving yourself on the coin I just threw – what’s behind your tunic is not something I haven’t seen before.”

I wasn’t embarrassed. I pulled up the edges of my tunic and took a step toward the coin, but again Antiope stopped me with a raise of her hand.

“You have to aim from a distance. You can do it.”

Still wondering what she wanted out of this, I gathered up my tunic in one hand and pulled it behind me. With my other hand, I grasped the small tube between my legs, careful not to squeeze and hurt it. What should I do exactly? Was it as simple as pointing it at the coin? Would it make it that far? Perhaps aim above to give it lift? I couldn’t think long because as soon as I exposed it to the air, I could feel my legs tensing up as the urine prepared to shoot. It sprayed out, concentrated and sharp, just to the left of Antiope’s old coin. I wriggled back and forth, sending the stream of urine across the coin and off again. I tried to grasp tighter to steer it, but that cut off the stream of liquid momentarily and I nearly let it slid out of my hand trying to correct it. Hesitantly, I gave the tube an upward prod with one of my fingers. The stream arced upward and the last of it emptied out directly onto the coin.

I smiled at her with pride. Her face pinched slightly, a twist of bitterness in her eye that caught me off guard.

“Your…” she began. She stopped for a moment to reflect. Her eyes were too resolute to peer behind; what she meant to say remained a mystery. “What should I call it? The way you can aim it is the matter.”

I laughed. “Why?”

Antiope pulled her sandals back on and looked directly at me. This time I did not turn away.

“Understand this, Diana: we severed ourselves from Man’s World to spare ourselves the tortures it births. Even if we could offer them anything, they would not take without biting the hand and swallowing us. It’s only by warding it off entirely that we can call this island a paradise. When you were born and we recognized the difference in your body, we knew you carried a sign of Man’s World on you. It’s minor now. But as you get older you’ll change, and the difference will become so great, the Amazons may not be able to hold back their fear.”

At the time, I couldn’t completely grasp the gravity of what she said. Not in words at least. Nothing in my comprehension. But even then, I could sense a door sealing shut – with the Amazons on one side, in festivity and companionship, and me on the other, with nothing.

“But I’m the princess! Why can’t they love me like one of their own?! They have to!”

Antiope shrugged and turned her head. I stomped my foot. She did not flinch, sparing me any part of her sight.

“Bratty little child,” she said, flatly. “Do you think you were created just to please? To be some delicate little flower for the Amazons to dote on? Amazons are strong. They would crush you without intending. Count yourself lucky they don’t care for you as much as they’re sisters. You couldn’t withstand what love is.”

I wanted to sit in the dirt and cry until she wavered. I thought of wailing until she faltered and came to say sorry and that she was all wrong. But it was as she said – every word she said was sturdy as a mountain. I could wale until the Titans rose from beneath the Earth and she wouldn’t budge.

“So, I’ll fight them,” I said. “I’ll get them to submit to me. Like an Amazon.”

Antiope chuckled. Her laugh was deep, coming from her chest, but quiet.

“Wrong again,” she said. “You understand so little of what makes a true Amazon, I’m surprised you haven’t discovered this all already. Amazonian submission is… never mind. You couldn’t understand it. You’re a child. There was never such a thing as an Amazon that was ever a child.”

“My mother is the queen of the Amazons! She can make it so!"

“The queen does not decide who is an Amazon. The goddesses of Olympus do. Are you going to scale that mountain and tell Mother Hera this is what you want and she has to comply?”

I steeled my face to keep my nose tight and my eyes dry. If she saw me crying at her words, she would stop out of concern and I wouldn’t get all of the answers I came for.

“Why can’t I be an Amazon, too?”

Antiope finished fastening her sandals and stood up, casting a shadow over me.

“You cannot become an Amazon. You have to be born that way.”

She turned and walked away. I did not say another word. Without turning around she shouted back: “my feet are feeling better than usual. I will see you here tomorrow. I will not teach you anything you want. But there may be something to learn. Perhaps I’ll indulge you as you would have it. But more likely not. You have a lot to learn.”

I thought of calling after her, but already knew she was resolute. With that, I turned away and left the grounds, the sandalwood oil still drying on my hands. Something told me she did not even pause to glance back at me, so I did not either, out of respect.

At the palace, my mother ordered me a bath to get the dust from the fields off. I did not give her all the details from the day, aside from a few short exchanges. I was too caught up in trying to decipher what Antiope meant.

_Perhaps I’ll indulge you as you would have it. But more likely not. You have a lot to learn._ Was she saying she would teach me after all? If I had a lot to learn, then was what I asked of her possible? Was she testing me? Was there some sort of hidden message, a contradiction in what she said? What was I supposed to do next? But then I remembered what else she had said, earlier: _when I tell you something, you can go to sleep on it._ No mystery to solve with my aunt, the general of the Amazons. I did as she said and slept, not soundly, but nonetheless.

Next Time - **The Favors Needed for a Legend** **:** **The Six Mothers of Olympus!**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glad I could get this to y'all early! Just came about a lot sooner than I expected.
> 
> Let me know what you thought of Antiope!

**Author's Note:**

> This is a retelling of Wonder Woman's origin story where she's born with different sex characteristics. You can call this "trans Wonder Woman" but it's a hazy label since she's still assigned female at birth. I think that Diana's story compliments the experience of transgender women very well because a fundamental part of her story is about learning to become the kind of Amazon the others already are.
> 
> This story is not going to get explicit until Diana becomes a bit older, but there is stuff planned out. Growing up trans is rough.
> 
> If you're a fan of Hades (the Supergiant game), some of the gods will be appearing. I just really like the gods from Hades, so that's the version I am going with.
> 
> I'm at 5 chapters in drafts, but won't post the next one for a while. I want to have a long backlog before I commit to a regular posting schedule.


End file.
